Robot Kaspar for Autistic Children

An autistic child will move away if approached, or sudden stiff if embraced others. A robot was created to help autistic children socialize. One of the children with autism in England have received this therapy. Eden Sawczenko, which normally escape when approached by a friend or someone else, now began to want to cuddle after he was playing with the robot Kaspar of next-generation technology, and now the Eden initiative to embrace all people.

"Now she is more able to show affection to her friends, even to approach and interact," said Claire Sawczenko, mother of Eden. 4-year-old girl is learning in preschool for autistic children in Stevenage, north London. In this school all teachers are also researchers carrying robot character like children once a week. Autistic children, ranging from mild to severe, play with robots for 10 minutes with a scientist who controls the robot by remote control.

The robot is named Kaspar was programmed to do ordinary things, like smiling, frowning, laughing, blinking and waving. She has black hair matted, baseball caps, some wires protruding from the neck, and red striped socks. It was developed by scientists at the University of Hertfordshire with a cost of about USD 2.663. There are several versions of the next generation of robot technology, Kaspar, including one who is adept at playing the Nintendo Wii. The next generation of robot technology is still in experimental stage and the researchers hope one day they can produce in bulk for commercialized.

"Children with autism do not react well when faced with people because they do not recognize facial expressions," said Ben Robins, a senior researcher in computer science at the University of Hertfordshire who specializes in working with autistic children. "The robot is much safer for them because only a few emotions that arise and can be interpreted by children with autism. This makes children more easily translate autism and predict the emotional robot," says Ben Robins.